Saorrento

Britney Spear’s Circus Tour made its Australian opening performance in Perth last Saturday. Being a fan of some of her more popular hits like Toxic, Womanizer, Gimme More, just to name a few, and the fact that I considered it somewhat historic to be a part of, my girlfriend and I went to the opening performance of Circus.

In addition to some Britney music and seeing the girl herself dance on stage, the initial promotional media many months earlier at the ticket sales launch led me to believe that this was going to be much more than your average concert. This was for all intensive purposes (or as far as you can go still being a pop concert) a CIRCUS with live acts and other forms of entertainment. With this in mind, and thinking back to the Lyrics of Britney’s Circus album I envisaged (as probably she also initially did) a performance more like a theatricality piece rather than a concert. Sure there would be music and dancing, but there would be also an underlying ‘dark circus’ theme to the performance, a theme which was somewhat reflected in her music videos of the Circus album. Unfortunately the Circus tour itself was nothing like this.

Along with the odd circus performance which did not particularly marry in with what Britney was doing, the preparations for the Circus event were very poor. As with every concert/show there is usually a supporting act. In this case DJ Havana took the stage and performed a fantastic mix of various popular artists. She had the stage for about 20 minutes. Usually, when a supporting act finishes, the stage curtains go down for perhaps 2 minutes while the main act gets ready on stage. In the case of the Circus tour, the curtain went down and a animated countdown was projected onto it ‘The Circus will start in 25 Minutes’. The reception of this notice was like a kick in the guts. Three hours had transpired from the time the doors initially opened to the time Britney actually made it to stage.

Other than the poor performance of her Circus Tour, the Australian press hit hard over Britney miming her songs in the show rather than singing them. I would really like nothing more than Australia and other countries around the world to get off their high-horse about this. Since her last performance it has been well known that Britney chooses to mime her songs, whether or not that is a good thing isn’t the issue, what is the issue is that we all knew to expect this in Circus. Yet there are still thousands of people who have complained that she mimed… Well Duh!! where have you people been?? Why expect any different?

Personally, I still enjoyed the show. I enjoyed the music and I enjoyed the performance (what I could see of it) but it definitely wasn’t worth the price many Australians including myself paid for it. For the price you would at least expect a flawless dance routine, a larger stage or more thought given to seating and view.

Britney, if performers like Pink can perform acrobatics in the air and still hold a note, you should give it a go too. The one song you did perform live was fantastic, you have a great voice, do yourself a favor, go back to basics, get rid of the performanc/dance routines and just SING. Sadly, this time around you left many Australians saying ‘Gimme More’!

Toxic:

Womanizer: